


modern age tornado

by Tyleet



Series: somewhere under the rainbow [3]
Category: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Smallville, Superman - All Media Types, Young Justice
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Clones, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, M/M, Terrible Parents, eventual Clark/Lois/Lex, fractured families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:23:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beware Greeks bearing gifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	modern age tornado

**Author's Note:**

> Titles are stolen from the Jane Austen Argument's gorgeous song "Under the Rainbow," because of aliens and kansas and homes that are blown away. There are several lines cut directly from Smallville, Young Justice, and Lois & Clark that i have pasted directly into the events of the fic--so if you recognize them, that's why. 
> 
> This is a fusion universe, although I hope that you don't have to be familiar with all three canons in order to understand what's going on. I've only seen up to season three of SV, so Lois is plucked straight from Lois & Clark, Conner is the sixteen year old boy from Young Justice, and Clark and Lex share a Smallville past. I very much hope it all makes sense!
> 
> I am deeply grateful to cortue for being a thorough and excellent beta, and the story is 1000% better for it. Eternal gratitude also goes out to dignifiedrice, who read it and talked me through some more issues even though she's writing her dissertation. This is the longest fic I've ever written! I feel very accomplished.

The whole thing starts like this: Lois has been befriending Clark's clone for months. Without telling him about it.

"It's not a big deal," she tells him, crossing her arms. "I've taken the kid out for coffee a few times." 

"I can't believe you did this without telling me," Clark says, feeling trapped, like he needs time to assemble all the reasons why he feels betrayed.

"I can't believe you haven't talked to the kid since New Year's," Lois returns, crossing her arms.

Clark flinches, and the fight goes on from there.

"Look," Lois says, rubbing her forehead. "I know a little bit more about abandoned kids than you do, okay?" She holds up a hand, cutting off Clark's protest. "Yeah, I know. Krypton, cornfield. But you've always had a great relationship with your parents, and I had the missing mom, the absentee dad, and the alcoholic aunt. I remember what it was like, all right?"

"Lois--" Clark begins helplessly, and she sighs. 

"Clark." She just looks at him, all determined eyes and bitten lower lip. "Whether or not it was right for me to stick my nose in, it's done. And I'm not going to walk out of this kid's life, just because you think I should."

Clark knows he can't argue with that.

That doesn't mean he can stop himself from trying.

*

See, Clark knows several things for sure:

Lex Luthor made Superboy. Designed him, built him, selected the information they fed into his developing brain.

Lex hasn't stopped trying to hurt Clark in over a decade. 

Kryptonians are dangerous. Half the Justice League has contingency plans for what to do if Clark goes crazy and tries to take over the world, someday. Some of them are very good plans. Clark is also terrifyingly sure that none of them could stop him.

So as much as he'd like to believe that Superboy is just another kid, albeit one with superpowers--he _can't._

He's watched the security footage of Superboy's escape from Cadmus, listened to Superboy's casual self description:  _I am the Superboy. Cloned from Superman's DNA, to replace him should he perish. To destroy him should he turn from the light._ Lex's eyes, staring at the cameras as though he knew Clark was watching. Lex's words, comfortable and automatic in Superboy's mouth. All the old terrifying arguments, shining out of a child's face.

In eight years of trying to save the world, Superboy's white face looking up at Clark for the first time is still the worst thing he's ever seen.

*

The next time Lois meets Superboy for coffee, Clark follows her, sailing about a thousand feet above Lois's blue Honda Civic, speeding along the highway.

He's not proud of it. But he can't stop worrying that maybe this is what Lex has been waiting for. For Clark to let his guard down. Maybe he doesn't care, anymore, that Lois will get caught in the crossfire.

She makes the two-hour drive from Metropolis to Happy Harbor in an hour and a half, listening to Bob Dylan the entire way. She only listens to Bob Dylan when she's upset--it reminds her of her father. So even though she seems composed, he knows better. She drums her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music, and sings along distractedly, every now and again:

_Oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son?  
And where have you been, my darling young one? _

Happy Harbor's a beach town, and it's late, beautiful summer. She parks her car at the beach, and steps out into the sun, managing in that mysterious Lois way to look cool and unruffled, even though Clark knows the air conditioning's broken in the car--he's been meaning to ask Jimmy to fix it.

He settles on a roof about five city blocks away, and watch as she walks briskly to a beachfront cafe, dropping her purse at an outside table, a breeze lightly touching her hair. She checks her phone, a familiar, habitual gesture, and taps at it briefly.

His phone buzzes against his hip.

 _out of town for the day,_ the message reads, Lois's face winking at him from her icon. _If Hayes gets in touch, CALL ME._ Melissa Hayes is a botanist with a degree in xenobiology from Harvard. She's also their source at Lex Labs--ammunition in the Daily Planet's ongoing war against LexCorp.

 _I will,_ he sends back, and then adds-- _you're not texting while driving again, are you?_ for verisimilitude. He watches her smile briefly when she gets the text, before sobering up.

 _you worry too much, farmboy,_ she replies.

There are lots of reasons for him to be worried about Lois. She _does_ text while she drives. She smokes. She has a habit of pissing very powerful people off. She thinks signaling before changing lanes is optional. This, though. This is what keeps Clark up at night.

_I worry exactly the right amount._

About ten minutes later, Superboy joins her, an enormous white dog padding along at his side. The other patrons at the cafe give them understandably dubious looks--the animal looks like it's one decent meal away from deciding people are edible. He looks almost like an ordinary teenager--maybe a little too old for his age, a little too muscular for most seventeen year olds, no matter how athletic. Clark knows better.

Lois falls to her knees immediately, a bright smile on her face, and the dog nudges its massive head against her shoulder while she coos and strokes its white pelt. She doesn't hug Superboy, but she gives him the same smile, and he looks marginally less sullen.

The dog curls up under their table while Lois takes Superboy inside and buys him a smoothie. She gets pineapple, he gets strawberry-mango. The dog lifts up its pale head and stares straight at Clark.

"Shoo," he whispers, even though he knows it can't really see him.

They come back out to the table, Lois carefully balancing a styrofoam bowl filled with water, for the dog.

"Seriously," she's saying, waving the hand carrying her smoothie at his clothes, "you aren't blending well."

Superboy gives her a cautious look. "There's at least five people at my school with the same shirt." He's wearing the same red shadow of Superman's symbol that he's worn every time Clark's seen him in the last year. 

"Ordinary kids diversify their wardrobes," Lois says dismissively. "And it's ninety degrees out. You could wear sandals, at least."

Superboy shrugs. "I don't feel heat like you do. Not unless we're talking, like, oven-hot." 

"Proving my point," Lois finishes, grinning. "Humans sweat in this kind of weather. You aren't blending."

Superboy scowls at her, familiar thick brows drawing down, and it makes his heart beat faster, the way it always does. Clark's face, looking at the woman he loves with an expression that isn't his.

"Flip-flops," she repeats, pulling out her phone and tapping a few times. "At minimum."

 "No," he says immediately, crossing his arms over his chest.

Clark listens to them talk for another forty-five minutes, watching expressions flicker over his clone's face: interest, caution, amusement, They talk about his dog, conservative newscasters, a band Clark's never heard of, the details of a covert op the Titans completed a month earlier. He shifts restlessly, yellow sun beating down and filling him with the itching need to move, fly away, do _something_.

"It's a war," Lois says, slapping the table. "If the principal's telling you any different, he's wrong. It's kill or be killed."

"I don't have time," Superboy says, rolling his eyes. "What with, you know, _battling evil_."

"Then Harvard won't have time for you," Lois says  sadly. "Fine. School paper's out. What about sports?" 

Superboy rolls his eyes at her, and Clark wonders, not for the first time, if he's wrong. 

"You didn't go to Harvard," Superboy points out. "What's wrong with MetU?"

"I went to Williams," Lois says with a self-satisfied smile. "Which you are welcome to look into after you figure out how to pass an English class. And nothing's wrong with MetU, if you don't mind no financial aid, a fifty thousand dollar tuition, and trying to pay off debt in the most expensive city in the world."

"I'm pretty much guaranteed the Lexcorp scholarship," Superboy says, a guarded expression on his face, and Clark's breath catches. He _knew_ it, he knew Lex would never allow an investment like that to walk away--

But Lois is nodding, like this is a valid point and not a declaration.

"That's probably true," she says carefully. "But no decent college is going to accept somebody--even a legacy--with a 2.0 GPA." This is a lie, and Superboy clearly knows it. "Or do you really want to take the place of somebody who earned it?"

The dog is staring at Clark again.

"Maybe I don't need to go to college at all," Superboy says, changing tactics. "The last time I checked, you don't need a degree to be a professional superhero."

"Professional?" she says with a smirk, the conversation settling back into less fraught territory. "You gonna start charging?"

Clark watches Superboy's face closely for the next fifteen minutes until Lois finally says goodbye, looking for more traces of that guarded threat. His face is very much like Clark's, when he was young--except for the eyes. Lex's eyes, looking out from Clark's face. It makes Clark feel sick, like it always does.

"See you around," Lois says, smiling.

Superboy nods in reply, stepping away, his dog at his side.

Clark watches him walk down the beach while Lois throws out her cup and gets back into her car. The music picks back up where it left off.

_I met one man who was wounded in love.  
I met another man who was wounded in hatred. _

"A hard rain's a-gonna fall," Lois sings to herself, pulling out of the parking lot.

*

Melissa Hayes calls just as Clark's lifting off from the rooftop. She sounds nervous. Wants to know if he can meet her in the food court at the Sunset Valley mall in twenty minutes.

"I'll be there," Clark promises, and shoots off a quick text to Lois.

 _Did she say if she had the report????_ Lois sends back, almost immediately.

 _I'll let you know,_ Clark replies, and zips back home to change, before heading to the mall.

The basics of the story go like this: Almost a month ago, Lois got a tip that LexCorp was experimenting with possibly alien material. They assumed that it was kryptonite, obviously--isn't it always kryptonite, with LexCorp?

So Lois snuck into LexCorp and tried to get a look at their shipment records--only to come face to face with evidence that the 'alien material' wasn't kryptonite at all, but a greenhouse of formerly extinct flowers. LexCorp security discovered her at that point, and deleted all the evidence Lois had managed to capture on her phone--but Clark recognized the flower's description.

In the early 2000s, Dr. Hamilton, formerly of Smallville, used liquid kryptonite to resurrect a seedling of the long-dead Nicodemus flower. The flower, also of alien origin, although not Kryptonian, was first sighted in the fifteen hundreds, in the settlement that would eventually become Smallville. The flower's pollen immediately infected those it came into contact with, first lowering inhibitions and filling its victims with unnatural strength and aggression, then dropping them into feverish comas.

Clark remembers. He was sixteen, and his dad and the girl of his dreams were both in the hospital, hooked up to life support machines. He’d gone to Lex—because back then he always went to Lex. And Lex had solved the problem. A team of Metropolis doctors had found an antidote derived from meteor rocks and a sample of the plant itself--but conveniently, all records of that antidote had vanished from hospital records, and the doctors who worked on the 2003 comas were all now in LexCorp employ. The original flower was destroyed--but apparently Dr. Hamilton had kept his research. 

Of course, that's a lot of conjecture and coincidence. They still need proof.

Melissa Hayes is waiting for him by the Orange Julius. She's sweating.

"You promise my name won't be in the article?" she asks in an anxious undertone, so quietly that Clark probably wouldn't be able to hear her if he weren't an alien. "They won't be able to trace this back to me?"

"I can promise that we'll protect you," Clark tells her gently. "And that we'll keep you anonymous."

She pulls out a thin folder from her purse. "This is everything I know," she says in an unsteady voice. "They're moving a small shipment of plant cuttings from the greenhouse to a Metropolis lab sometime in the next month. That's it. That's everything."

"Thank you," Clark says, and slides the folder into his briefcase. "If you need anything--I mean anything--"

"I'll call," she says hastily, already getting up to leave.

Clark scans the file with X-ray vision on his way out the door. It's all in heavy scientific language, but right at the top it speculates that the Nicodemus seedling is Mars-based.

"Gotcha," he murmurs, and heads back to the Planet.

*

He beats Lois back to Metropolis, as he knew he would. He hurries back into the Planet, and collapses back at his desk, the usual mountains of research awaiting him.

"You got the LexCorp press conference in two hours," Jimmy reminds him, leaning over Clark's shoulder to tap at the screen of his laptop, rainbow swirls around the message in his inbox. "Answer your phone next time. Perry's been having conniptions. Whatever those are."

"Gotcha," Clark says, spreading the folder out over his desk. "Is Lois on her way?"

"Obviously," Jimmy says, giving Clark a careful look. "You all right, CK? You don't look that great."

"I don't get sick," Clark says automatically.

"Uh huh," Jimmy says, raising one eyebrow. "What's with all the sick time you're always taking off, then, huh?"

Time spent saving the world, or traveling off it. Thank god he has Lois to cover for him.

"I don't--feel sick?" Clark tries. "I had kind of a weird afternoon. Don't worry about it."

"Sure," Jimmy says. "Hey, I can't do the thing with you on Sunday. The benefit thing. Snap some photos on your phone, it'll probably turn out all right."

They're supposed to be covering the opening of a new collection at the Met, since Cat's in Italy for some film festival--Perry's punishment for Clark's last run-in with legal. He doesn't mind human interest that much, but it makes Lois sneer. She likes to cut the articles out and tape them to his desk, like she's dragging out his dirty laundry or something.

"Why can't you make Sunday?" Clark asks, idly twirling a pencil between his fingers. "Exciting plans?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I have to go back to Staten. Father's Day thing."

The pencil snaps.

Jimmy's eyebrows go up.

Clark sighs.

*

Clark's known since he was fifteen that he'd never be a father. Ever since he stuck his arm into a woodchipper and broke the machine, ever since his parents showed him the spaceship in their storm cellar. Ever since an expensive car ran into him going seventy miles an hour, and he lived.

He might look human, but he isn't. Kryptonian DNA gives him a lot of advantages, but it took away all his chances of a normal life, no matter how hard he tries to pretend otherwise. Everything anyone knows about cross-species reproduction suggested that Clark ever being a father was an impossibility.

When he was fifteen, that barely mattered--he was more concerned with himself, with the unbelievable realities that came with his powers manifesting. He woke up one day and he could see right through his best friend's skin to his skeleton, to his green pulsing organs. He daydreamed about his biology teacher's gorgeous breasts, and shot fire out of his eyes. He woke up and realized he'd been floating up to the ceiling in his dreams. Not to mention how hard it was to navigate the minefield of a town sown with kryptonite, trying not to get himself or his friends or his parents killed. What's the realization that you can't have kids compared to that?

By the time he was old enough that it might have mattered more, he'd lived with the knowledge for so long that it didn't even feel like a loss. Lots of people didn't have kids. Clark would be one of them, that was all. 

He'd brought it up with Lois, a few years ago--the kind of perfunctory check you do with people you're dating, even though you're fairly certain you know the answer. It had been easy: he'd explain that kids weren't a possibility, and she'd shrugged and said that was fine by her. ("I like kids, but I don't particularly want to have one," she'd said, already turning back to her computer. "I hear they're pretty time-consuming.")

He only actually remembers seriously thinking about it once--the year his mom was pregnant.

He'd been sitting in Smallville's finest coffee shop, watching the girl he loved deliver orders, and Lex had appeared at his shoulder, the way he did in those days. Clark remembers never being surprised by it. Why wouldn't Lex always be there?

"So, do you know if you'll be painting the newest Kent a blue or pink bedroom, yet?" Lex had asked him, all drawl and cool blue eyes. A lot of Clark's Smallville memories are like that: the red and gold swirl of the Talon, rich coffee smell, Lana smiling at someone else across the room and Lex a cynical, friendly presence at his side.

Clark shook his head. "They want to find out the old-fashioned way."

"I think I'd want to know," Lex said musingly. "I'm not a big fan of surprises." Or secrets. "Besides, the more time you have to plan, the less likely you are to make a mistake."

"It's a baby, not a war," Clark pointed out.

Lex smiled, the bitter, self-deprecating one that meant he was thinking about his father. "Well, maybe my perspective's a little skewed."

"Do you want kids?" Clark asked, expecting the answer to be no. All Lex did was complain about his family--it was hard to imagine him ever wanting to start one.

"Sure," Lex said, and Clark blinked. Lex looked completely serious. "Someday. Preferably after my father's dead and gone, so there's no way he could interfere in their lives."

"Wow," Clark said. "That's--hard to picture." Lex, all dressed in designer black, with a small pink bundle burping up onto his suit jacket.

"You don't think I'd be a good father?" Lex asked, unreadable. "Can't say I blame you."

"No," Clark said immediately. "I think you'll be a great dad. I mean, at least you know what not to do, right?"

"That's true," Lex said, smile back in place. "What about you? Do you hear the patterings of tiny feet in the Kent/Lang future?" 

"Don't joke," Clark said, heat rising to his face as he searched out Lana, handing out orders on the other side of the room. "And no. I'm not gonna have kids."

"That is surprising," Lex said, eyebrows raised. "Does Mrs. Kent know you aren't planning on giving her grandchildren?"

Clark shrugged, uncomfortable. "I um. I can't."

"Can't as in--" Lex's eyes widened.

"--can't," Clark finished, shrugging again. A hand came up to tentatively press against his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Clark," Lex said softly.

"It's not a big deal," Clark said, trying to change the subject. "I'll just have to hang out with your kids, won't I? How does 'Uncle Clark' sound?"

Lex gave him a slow smile, hand still resting on Clark's shoulder, warm and solid. "You never know what the future will bring you."

*

"Hey, Smallville," Lois says, sweeping back into the office like she hasn't spent half the day driving down the highway with the windows down. "Whatcha got for me?"

Clark slides over the folder, relevant bits highlighted and questions penned onto the sides. It's honestly more than they could have hoped for: proof that Lex Labs definitely has been working on chemically isolating the mood-alterating substances in the Nicodemus flower. Testimony that the isolation process was derived from Dr. Hamilton's Smallville research. This is enough to get him.

"Press conference in an hour," Clark says, relishing the grin that's slowly spreading over her face. "Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and find a Lex Labs scientist to corner?"

Lois drops a kiss to the top of his head. "Grab your purse," she orders, leaning against his chair, one hand smoothing down the back of his neck, the other paging through the file. "You can read the rest of this to me in the car."

"It's a messenger bag," Clark says, like he always does, but he grabs it and follows her back out the door.

She grills him over every inch of the file, every possible angle, the strategies they'll want to take, all while dodging through rush hour traffic like she's just as invulnerable as him.

"Signal!" he shouts, as Lois cuts out a semi while darting into the next lane. "Oh my god, Lois."

"This is _perfect_ ," she says, ignoring him. "Read me the part about Dr. Hamilton dying of a fatal side effect of his own research again."

"You're being flipped off by five separate people right now," he tells her. "You think we can make the morning edition?"

She grins, and steps on the gas.

Lois accidentally knocks into Rutherford from the Daily Herald as they're heading inside, spilling his press kit all over the floor. It also conveniently allows her to steal his second-row seat.

"Was that really necessary?" Clark murmurs from his third row seat directly behind her.

"Kill or be killed," she tells him, serene and unmoving.

"You're talking about war," he tells her shoulders. "This is journalism." 

He can tell from her voice that she's smiling. "Your problem is you think there's a difference."

Clark has a velvet box hidden in his sock drawer at home. It's not too fancy--a thin platinum band, a small diamond. Ethically sourced. Clark made it himself, crushing a lump of coal between his hands until it gave, until what he had left was small and hard and bright.

He's thought about asking her so many times. There have been many perfect moments. Lois glowing at him across a dinner table at an elegant restaurant. Lois sitting with him on the roof of the Daily Planet, their shining city spread out beneath them, vending machine sandwiches in their laps, sunlight catching in her hair. Lois panting and grinning in his bed, loose-limbed and happy. Lois with her hand in his, walking through the cornfield after visiting his parents. Lois in the moonlight, red lipstick and dark eyes and heels sticking in the dirt, so achingly perfect he can barely speak, let alone find the right words.

He doesn't know what it says about him that the only times he's felt like he could really ask her--like he could get the words out of his mouth and have them sound as perfect and true as they should be--are when they're working. When she's sarcastic and brilliant and focused, on her A-game--when he feels just as clear headed and excited. When they're perfectly in sync, a perfect team. It feels simple, easy--he could just lean forward, right now, and whisper "Hey, Lois." And she'd say "What, Kent?", and he'd say "I love you," and she'd say "You're making me blush," and he'd say "Would you maybe want to marry me?" and just--hand her the box.  Whereupon Lois would _kill_ him, because they're _working_ , and if there's one thing Lois has taught him it's that work is sacred.

"Hey, Lois," he says, anyway.

"Shut up," she hisses, breathless. "Lex is here. Why is he here? This is supposed to be a brief statement about the expansion of Luthor Plaza, not CEO-level stuff."

Sure enough, Lex is striding confidently up to the podium, politician's smile sliding effortlessly onto his face, and behind him is--

"Oh, shit," Clark breathes. Melissa Hayes, white-faced and fearful.

"Bastard," Lois agrees.

*

Lex is at his most charismatic when he informs the ladies and gentlemen of the press that there has been a slight change in topic for this afternoon's press conference. Lex Labs, he reports with a proud smile, has just managed to isolate a new pharmaceutical, extracted from a nearly extinct flower native to Kansas. The drug is a powerfully effective, non-addictive anti-depressant, sure to change the face of medical treatment for depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. As CEO, Lex would, of course, have preferred to wait until the clinical trials were over to announce this to the public, but recent concerns--he looks directly at Lois, here--have come to light that makes him wish to express LexCorp's heartfelt desire for transparency.

He claps a friendly hand onto Melissa Hayes' s shoulder, and announces that he's asked a member of Lex Lab's research team to explain more about the drug to the public.

Lois slowly crumples up the folder in her hands.

*

"We can still get him," she says with false optimism as they walk away from the conference hall. 

"We don't have proof," Clark says, staring at the creased folder. "Just conjecture, some personal bias on my part, and a testimony that Hayes will retract if we go public."

Lois's mouth straightens into a thin red line. "So we get some proof."

Proof, as Clark knows from long, bitter experience, takes time to find--even if you _can_ see through walls.

*

He flies home on Sunday morning, for Father's Day. He doesn't mention it to Lois--just leaves her a note on the nightstand, stroking one hand over her hair. Maybe that's cowardly, but--he doesn't think he could stand to have another fight, not so soon after the last one. They've settled into an uneasy detente--Lois keeps seeing Superboy, Clark keeps watching it happen, neither of them bring it up. Father's Day is too fraught. One of them's bound to crack.

His parents are happy to see him.

"Where's Lois?" his mom asks, after they've played a round of catch-up and he's been settled on the couch with a cup of coffee, like he's a guest. 

"Busy with work," he lies, wishing it didn't come so easy. He never used to have to lie to his parents.

"Well, more pancakes for us," his dad points out, clapping Clark on the shoulder. 

He hasn't told them about Superboy. At first it didn't seem worth it--Superboy was so obviously one of Lex's weapons, and the Teen Titans are a covert operation, so it's not like they'd find out on their own. When it became clear that Lex was playing a longer, more difficult game--it's harder. He knows they'd want to know. But he doesn't want to risk them the way Lois is already risking herself. Lex has left his family alone, since leaving Smallville. He's spent years developing red kryptonite bullets and green kryptonite bombs--has done everything in his power to exploit every single one of Clark's weaknesses, except the ones he knows are living quietly in Smallville. Whether that's meant to be honor among thieves, or a twisted form of respect, or just fear of what Clark's retaliation might be, Clark doesn't know. But Superboy's very existence breaks every single one of those unspoken rules. He won't put the rest of his family in danger.

"Clark?" his mom says, halfway through breakfast. "Are you okay, honey? You look a little pale."

"Just tired," Clark says, giving them a hopefully convincing smile. "It's been a long couple of weeks."

His parents are good people. When they found a child they did not ask for, they took him in, and loved him, and worked very hard to teach him right from wrong, black and white. It's not their fault Clark ended up mired in gray.

He leaves after breakfast, giving his father a tight hug and a happy Father's Day.

"Call more often," his mother says, stroking a hand down the side of Clark's face. "You're so busy I have to rely on the Inquisitor to keep up with you."

"I will," Clark tells them. "Promise."

It's quiet on the way back to Metropolis. He listens for Lois's heartbeat: slow and steady. A reassurance. She's on the phone, and cooking at the same time--she probably just got up. He doesn't mean to keep listening, but it occurs to him that if he can figure out what she's cooking, he can pick up some apology pastries or something to match.

"Yeah, me and my dad are not close," she's saying, while flicking a switch. Probably the coffeemaker. "He was kind of a terrible father. I'll probably call him tonight, and my sister'll take him out to dinner, but I don't really see the point."

"I can relate," a familiar voice says drily, and Clark realizes with a lurch that she's talking to Superboy.

Lois hesitates, and Clark wonders queasily if she's going to try to defend him, even though he so obviously doesn't deserve it.

"Well, Mother's Day's worse," she says instead, dodging it altogether. That's the sound of her cracking eggs. It's unnaturally loud in Clark's ears. "For both of us, I bet."

Superboy laughs, then asks her in a hesitant voice what happened to her mom.

"Car crash," Lois says briskly. Liquid sound of her pouring herself a cup of coffee. Clark wonders with a weird, sharp pang if she called Superboy, or if he called her.  "When I was four."

"I'm sorry," Superboy says, and he sounds it.

"It's fine," Lois says. "It was a long time ago."

Clark can see Metropolis now--the yellow midmorning spread out over the buildings, glittering on the river. In a minute he'll be home.

"It's probably better than not having a mom at all," the kid says awkwardly. Clark honestly might throw up.

"Maybe," Lois says, voice gentle as it almost never is, and Clark stops listening abruptly, reeling himself back in until all he can hear is his own heart, pounding in his ears.

*

He goes to her favorite bakery, buys a pink box of fresh danishes, and pretends that his hands aren't shaking. Apple streusel. It's her favorite. Waits another fifteen minutes to make sure she's done talking before he goes home.

There's no logical reason for Clark to feel like this. He doesn't want kids--has _never_ wanted kids--there's no reason for him to feel like the kid's ripping his heart out just by existing, no reason for the kid's hurt voice to sound like something Clark's longed for his whole life without realizing it. It feels dangerous, _wanting_ this badly without understanding why.

"Well, somebody loves me," Lois says with a smile when he comes in, smelling like baked apples and cinnamon. She ate alone--probably while on the phone--and is just bringing a plate to the sink. 

"I do," he says, or tries to say, because the words don't come out, just his lips moving around them.

"Clark?" She puts the plate down, comes closer. "What's wrong?"

His throat feels blocked--he swallows, tries again.

"Hey," she says quietly, taking the box out of his hands and putting it on the floor. Pulling him in close, her hand stroking down his neck, his head buried in her shoulder. He sinks into it, closing his eyes, wrapping his arms around her.

"I heard you talking," he admits, and his voice comes out--wrong. Her hands tighten on his skin. "On the phone. To, um."

"Clark," she says on a sigh, and then she's pulling away--just far enough to tip his head down to hers, to give him the kind of sweet, searching kiss that he doesn't deserve, not at all. He kisses back, melting into her, and she's warm and human and _here_ , like she always is.

She takes him back to their bedroom, and it's hard for him to let go of her for long enough to get their clothes off.

He shouldn't _feel_ like this, it's _wrong_ , it goes against his common sense, everything he knows about love and the world and the way it works. He doesn't know why it hurts so much to not have what he doesn't want.

"It's okay," she whispers between kisses, her body hot and tight and perfect, her brown Lois eyes full and sad. "I'm sorry," he whispers back, because suddenly it feels important to tell her. "I'm sorry, I don't--I'm not--"

"It's okay," she repeats, and kisses him quiet, and for a while he can't tell if the ache in his chest or the sweet ache in his spine is worse.

Afterward, lying with his head on her shoulder, one of her hands tangled in his hair, she picks up his right hand and presses her lips to the exact center of his palm. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, soft like her mouth against his lifeline, like the whisper of her hair on his skin.

"I don't think I can," he says, voice still hoarse.

"Okay," she agrees, still gentle. But because she's Lois, and Lois always tells the truth, she adds: "But you can't put it off forever." The rest is unspoken, but plain: Not without losing him. Maybe not without losing her.

*

He's mostly pulled himself together by that night, for the thing at the Metropolis Museum of Art. Lots of money, lots of classical sculptures, lots of champagne. Starlets and politicians will be collecting, and Clark owes Perry one, after the last run-in with LexCorp. Jimmy's back in Staten Island, Lois is watching TV while wearing one of Clark's T-shirts, and Clark is on his own, carrying a borrowed camera. 

He's lucky enough to snatch a couple minutes with the mayor, and with the police chief, who he likes, even though she has a pretty low opinion of Clark Kent. He snaps a picture of Brad and Angelina by a piece of weathered sculpture that looks vaguely like an ancient toilet seat, although they look enchanted.

He's going in to see if he can steal a word with the museum director when he sees the familiar bald head from across the room.

Well. Well, he should have expected this--and he would have, if today had been a little less demanding. He sees Lex, from time to time. At press conferences. Getting out of cars, under the bright flash of paparazzi lights. Once Clark left a coffee shop through the kitchen because Lex had walked in through the front door. They live in the same city, after all. And Lex is the definition of anybody who's anybody, so of course he's here, shaking hands with the MetU president, a dark, smiling starlet on his arm.

Clark isn't at all prepared for the hot, ugly rush of anger, overwhelming like it hasn't been since high school. Lex always manages to pull out the teenager in him. It takes all that's in him to stay planted by the canapés instead of storming over there and demanding that Lex explain himself. But that's a very bad idea, for many reasons. He's not in high school anymore. Lex doesn't need a reason to hurt Clark, not now. And asking him to explain himself only worked if Clark thought he was telling the truth.

He focuses on getting sound bytes about this year's charity, scribbling some notes on the more important pieces in the auction. The toilet seat, which is apparently nearly a thousand years old, a ten-foot tall marble that might have been stolen straight from the Parthenon, and a series of urns depicting the exploits of an ancient hero.

"Beautiful, aren't they?"

Clark stiffens, swallows the rage down. It won't help. It never helps.

Lex is standing beside him, pale eyes focused on the urns. "This one shows the birth of Athena. Springing fully formed from Zeus's skull."

"What do you want?" Clark grits out from between clenched teeth.

Lex looks at him with mock surprise, eyebrows raising. "You don't want a quote for your article? I donated this piece to the collection, after all."

"I think I've heard enough of you lecturing me about Greek mythology for one lifetime," Clark snaps, because this is too much. He doesn't need to be reminded of Smallville right now--doesn't need to be reminded of Lex, younger and so much less polished, leaning over a pool table and explaining all the ways that the Trojan war applies to modern business, earnest and hypnotic at the same time.

"I do hope some of it sunk in," Lex says, and it's _unbearable_ , the performance of a dead friendship when Lex would like nothing better than to see Clark devastated and kneeling at his feet. Clark hates lies. He's always been better with the truth.

"Sure," Clark says bitterly, his eyes fastening on Lex's throat, the quick pulse beating there. "Beware Greeks bearing gifts."

"Mm," Lex agrees, an odd expression flickering across his face. "Well, that's one way of looking at it."

"You know, maybe you can give me a quote," Clark says sharply. "Do you want to tell the people of Metropolis why, exactly, you're trying to replicate Dr. Hamilton's turn of the century experiments? Or would you like to wait until you can explain yourself to the families of the coma victims?"

"Off the record?" Lex asks, stepping closer. "I'm a little shocked that you don't understand the potential of the Nicodemus flower, Clark. It could help so many people."

"And as a poison," Clark says with disgust.

"We're working on lowering the risk factor, obviously," Lex says, looking straight at Clark with steady, clear eyes, a lie Clark knows not to believe. "We'd be helping people. That's all I want to do. I don't know why you've never believed me."

Clark's had enough. More than enough. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Luthor, I need to go collect some useful quotes for my article," he says as coldly as he can, and steps past Lex, pulling out his camera.

"Sure, Clark," Lex says softly--too quiet for a human to hear, but more than loud enough for Superman's ears. Which Lex knows. "Happy Father's Day."

Clark flinches, and his grip on the camera tightens. He can hear something important snap. He turns around, threats clawing their way up his throat and into his mouth: _If I find out that you've done anything else to Superboy--if I find out you've so much as_ touched _him--I know what Lionel did to you, and I won't allow you to do it to--If I hear_ you _of all people accuse_ me _of failure--_

But Lex has already moved on, smiling broadly at the captain of police, who gives him a dour look in return.

Clark leaves, exhaling a trembling breath. He drops the remains of the camera in the trash outside, and finds the nearest dark alley, sandwiched between a Pret a Manger and an H&M. Jimmy's going to kill him, but then, that's nothing new.

He checks quickly to make sure nobody's watching, and then rockets himself up to the sky, leaving the alley and the lights and the museum and Lex and his killing gifts and Metropolis behind.

I can't put it off forever, he remembers bleakly, and pushes himself further, until he can't even see the lights of the city beneath him, until there's nothing but Clark and the darkness, his skin and the cold night air. 

*

Before he knew everything about Superboy's conception--when all he knew was that Superboy was his clone, before he knew everything that Lex had put into this particular project--he'd thought. He'd thought maybe he could be wrong.

Clark knows he has several blindspots. Lex is one. Lois is another. Krypton--the crippling fear of his birth parents, of the destiny they built for him--is a third. Luthorcorp has made a point of telling the world how dangerous Superman is, on a global scale: the only thing stopping Clark from destroying the world is Clark himself.

Clark understands that. Clark knows Bruce has almost as much kryptonite as LexCorp stockpiled in his mansion. But Clark's the only one who really understands how very close it's come. If anything had happened differently--if his parents hadn't found him, if they hadn't loved him the way they did, if he hadn't had Pete and Chloe and Lana and Lois, so many anchors tying him to humanity--well. Clark knows better than anyone exactly how much damage he could do.

Superboy was a Kryptonian--was _Clark_ \--without his parents, without the lessons they taught him, without friends, and that was reason enough to distrust him--to stay away. To make sure Superboy didn't become another blindspot.

But then--Superboy joined the Teen Titans. Made friends. Dinah and Bruce both tried their best to convince Clark that he didn't display any traits of psychosis or sociopathy. That maybe Aqualad and his team had rescued Superboy before any harmful programming could be installed. 

And then there had been the supernatural catastrophe at New Years, when the Teen Titans had to rescue them all.

Clark had been knocked out--and when he came to, Superboy's panicked face was the first thing he saw. He hadn't hurt Clark, or tried to replace him, or betrayed them at all, even though he couldn't have chosen a better moment.

He'd watched as Superboy and his team took stock of each other, witnessed the raw affection that passed between them, saw J'onn's niece take Superboy's hand in hers and interlock their fingers. Ad he'd thought: maybe, maybe he was wrong. Maybe his clone had found his way to all the same conclusions Clark had. Maybe there wasn't any danger. Maybe Clark could have this. Maybe.

He approached him, tried to tell him--thank you. The kid looked at him warily, like he was expecting another dismissal--which Clark deserved.

"So," Clark said, desperately, "I, uh. I heard you took a name?" Bruce had tried to tell him, but Clark hadn't listened.

"Yeah," the kid said, still looking at Clark like he thought maybe the mind control hadn't totally worn off. "Conner Kent."

Oh. Oh, this was Bruce's doing. Some of his shock must have shown on his face, because the kid's eyes were narrowed again, so Clark explained in a rush: "My secret identity is Clark Kent." 

"I didn't know!" The kid--Conner--said at once, defensive. "I wasn't trying to--" To lay any claim on Clark. To ask him for anything. To call himself Clark's son.

"No," Clark said, deliberately cutting off that line of thinking."The thing is--I'm glad." He reached out, awkward, and rested his hand against Conner's shoulder. "Conner Kent. It seems…right."

Superboy looked at him with the worst expression Clark had ever seen--all half-devastated hope. And then he'd smiled, just the edges of his mouth lifting up. A familiar smile, although Clark hadn't known where he recognized it from.

Clark had kept that cautious smile locked in his chest, all through the cleanup, the debrief, the night with Lois in his arms. Conner Kent. Sixteen years--ten months--old. Right up until Bruce called him up and told him they needed to talk. Robin had made his final report on the events that led up to Vandal Savage's takeover.

Superboy was Lex's creature. Lex's son. Lex's design, Lex's project, and he'd installed programming in Superboy's head that they'd all missed, that allowed Lex to control his property as smoothly as he controlled his company. Superboy had Lex's eyes shining out of his face like a signature, like a _maker's mark_ , and Clark hadn't _known_ , and the hope dissolved in his mouth, and he'd had to stumble outside to breathe, trying not to throw up.

"Clark?" Bruce asked, a strong, human hand resting on Clark's shoulder, worried flat voice.

"Fine," Clark rasped. "But I. I don't want the boy near me. Do you understand?"

He didn't turn around. He didn't need to see the disappointment in Bruce's face.

"I understand," Bruce said, low and tired.

 *

Metropolis doesn't require much from Superman the next few days. It's selfish of him to wish that it would, but he does all the same.

"What'sa matter?" Lois mumbles, the third time he lets himself back in at four-thirty in the morning, after flying all night.

He shrugs. "Just not tired."

Her eyes narrow, calculating even in the dark, even with her hair smushed up against one side of her face and sleep crusting in the corners of her eyes. "We'll fix that tomorrow," she says finally, tugging at his hand until he lets himself be drawn back to the bed. "Sleep."

"Still not tired," he tells her, as she wraps herself around him like an octopus. "And we have to get up in an hour, anyway."

"Shut up," she says on a low sigh, eyes closed. "Pretend you're my pillow." 

He wakes her up in an hour and fifteen minutes, and she curses him before stumbling into the bathroom. She comes out half an hour later, dressed, immaculate and steely-eyed.

"What are you wasting time for?" she asks, glaring at the bread he's about to pop into the toaster. "We've got work to do, farm boy." He sears the toast almost black with his heat vision on the way out the door, and they eat it in crumbling bites on the way to work.

She spends the rest of the day working them both harder than she's done since he was first hired. "You don't need a lunch break," she barks, throwing a pencil at him that he doesn't bother to catch. "Talk to me about the designer drug angle." He stays at his desk collating research on Project Nicodemus and covertly heating up Lois's coffee for her until Perry comes by and gives them both disgusted glares and orders them to go home.

"Come on, Kent," she says, slinging an arm over his shoulders and relaxing into him. "We'll head home, order Thai food and keep going."

She pushes him just as hard for the next seven days--weeks of research compressed into hours, multiple sources tracked down and interviewed, hours pounding the pavement and frantically making phone calls at the same time, until he knows more about the Nicodemus flower than Lex's scientists probably do. This is what they find out: there's a rumor that Lexcorp is developing a sister project, alongside the pharmaceuticals, also derived from the Nicodemus flower. There's a rumor that this project is significantly less legal, that it's designed to produce the same side-effects as the original pollen: increased aggression, lowered inhibitions, fatal comas--but it's also designed to target non-humans and meta-humans. In other words: Themiscyrans. Martians. Kryptonians. Any superhero with meta-human abilities.

"This is wonderful," Lois says in a ragged voice, kissing her iPhone. "Good work. Great work. I could kiss you, too," she tells Clark with a wan smile, and it occurs to Clark that she must be as tired as he is--and he's _exhausted_.

That's when the hurricane hits Florida. Obviously.

Lois tries to look guilty, but mostly fails. "I thought maybe mental fatigue would help with the sleeping!"

He rolls his eyes and opens the window.

He comes back a full twenty hours later, covered in grime and bone-weary. He collapses into bed and almost immediately falls into a dreamless sleep. 

He thinks he wakes up once, to Lois's hand smoothing over his forehead.

"Sometimes I forget how young you are," she says softly. He doesn't know what she's talking about. She's only four years older.

"'M twenty-six," he tries to protest, even though his eyelids are still heavy. 

"Baby," she counters, and her fingers feel so good, stroking through his hair.

"Cradle-robber," he sighs, relaxing into the pillows, drifting a little. "Hey, Lois?"

"Mm?"

"Do you want to marry me?"

Her fingers still in his hair, and it hits him that he just asked it, the question he's been worrying about for months--just let it slip out all stupid and sleepy, just because he's been thinking about it for ages, shit, _shit_. He forces his eyes open with a huge effort, trying to sit up.

But she pushes him back down with one hand, leans over and brushes a kiss against his forehead. "Maybe when you wake up," is all she says.

*

When Clark wakes up, it's four in the afternoon, and Lois is at work.

He gets dressed and runs out the door.

He didn't ask her to marry him, he consoles himself on the way to the Planet. He asked her if she _wanted_ to marry him. Totally different question.

"Kent!" Perry barks as soon as he walks into the bullpen. "I thought you had the flu."

"Felt better, chief," Clark says with a shrug.

Perry rolls his eyes and orders Clark to get himself and his germs out of his face, so Clark makes his way over to his Lois's desk.

She's on the phone, and doesn't notice him walking up. 

"So should I mark that down as 'no comment'?" she's saying, low and amused.

The voice on the other end of the phone is loud enough that even a normal human could hear, Clark tells himself.

"No," Lex tells her, familiar dark tones that Clark would know anywhere. "You may quote me as saying that I have complete faith in Dr. Mendes, and in the fine officials at the EPA."

"Officials who wouldn't be on LexCorp payroll?" Lois asks with a fake gasp. "Imagine my shock."

Clark manages to unfreeze, and walks over to the other side of her desk. She looks up at him with a brief smile, and holds up a finger. One minute.

"Careful," Lex says, and Clark can tell he's smiling. "You know how much I love suing for libel."

"And you know how much I love a good exposé," she replies, eyes steady on Clark's. "Any chance you'd like to make a full confession, so I don't have to?"

"Off the record? I suppose it would help support LexCorp's anti-JLA stance if superheroes the world over started exploding into acts of untraceable drug-induced violence," Lex says thoughtfully. "But of course, I would be shocked were such a thing to happen." 

"Sure," Lois says, and her voice is a strange mixture of fond and frustrated. "Say hello to Acting Administrator Philips for me."

"And you'll give my regards to your fiancé," Lex says, and Clark and Lois wince at the same time. "Or hasn't he proposed yet?"

"Good _bye_ ," she says forcefully, and hangs up.

There's a brief pause.

"Um," Clark manages, and Lois sighs, rubbing her forehead.

"Can we just--pretend you didn't hear that?"

"Okay," he says cautiously, blindly reaching for the nearest chair and pulling it close to the desk. "So, you were--"

"Getting a comment about the Newbury plant," she says. And then she frowns, looking at his face carefully. "Does it bother you? Me talking to Lex?"

"No," Clark says immediately, even though he's not sure if it's true. Everything about Lex bothers him--but he'll never try to stop Lois from doing her job.

 It had bothered him years ago, when Lex and Lois were dating. In hindsight, a lot of that was jealousy--but he'd also been genuinely concerned for her safety. That was until after they broke up, and he tentatively mentioned his concern to Lois, and she snorted at him, told him Lex would never hurt her. How do you know for sure? he'd wanted to know. Will you just trust me? she'd asked him. After that it slowly became clear that there were rules, even if Lex was the only person who understood them all. He tried to kill Superman with fearless abandon, and he tried to get Lois Lane and Clark Kent arrested or fired at every available opportunity. But he never tried to hurt Lois, and he never told Clark's secret, and he never went after their friends, or their families.

Until now, obviously.

"Good answer," she says briskly, turning back to her computer. "You may pass Go, you may collect two hundred dollars. You may also buy me a vente americano with an extra shot, and get the Mendes interview on my desk by five. Got it, farmboy?"

 "As you wish," he answers.

*

They go home eventually, and he doesn't ask her to marry him. He doesn't want to feel goaded into it. Lex would probably call that cowardice.

There's a forest fire in Arizona ten miles long, and it's about to devour a small town. "I have to go," he says, yanking off his dress shirt. A button pops off and rolls onto the carpet.

"Okay," she says, eyeing the button. They're always finding them in weird places. "I was just going to call Conner, anyway."

He flinches, and she sighs.

"You gotta meet me halfway here, Smallville," she says softly.

"I'm sorry," he says, guilt paralyzing him with one foot on the windowsill.

"Go save Arizona," she says, pushing him out the window. "We'll talk later."

*

He fights fires all night. It's slow, arduous work, and it gives him far too much time to think. He tries to avoid thinking about Lois, about Superboy, about putting things off and the box in his dresser. He ends up thinking about Lex, relaxing into the familiar bitterness.

When he first moved to Metropolis, after finishing up his degree at GU, and he'd found out that his partner, Lois Lane--the woman whose writing he'd quietly idolized for almost a decade--was dating Lex, he'd been disgusted. Sure, he'd known that coming back to Metropolis would mean facing Lex--but he had hoped it wouldn't be personal.

Showing up to work every day to find familiar lavish gifts on his partner's desk, listening to Lois mention Lex off-handedly with the kind of wryness that meant she actually knew him, and wasn't just suckered in by his mask--felt personal. Hard to forget about your ex-best friend when your coworker keeps coming back from lunch with flushed cheeks, a swollen mouth, and a serene expression, and all you can think about is that you were his best man at two weddings before you even graduated high school.

He'd hated it--his chest ached all the time, and he couldn't tell if he was jealous that Lex got to see the parts of Lois that she buttoned away at work, or if he was jealous that Lois got to spend time with the Lex that no longer existed for Clark, the one he still missed sometimes, before remembering that it had all been a lie.

He tried to tell Lois it wasn't true, once or twice. She'd been furious. Told him to get his nose out of her personal life, back into the game.

When they finally stumbled onto the story that proved to Lois--if not to the world--exactly what kind of man Lex was, she'd ignored Clark's attempts to comfort her, had gone to confront Lex by herself, red-eyed and tight-lipped.

He found her later on the roof of the Daily Planet, after-hours, chain-smoking even though she'd quit six months ago, her feet dangling down over the city.

"I don't want to hear it," she said roughly, not turning to look at him. "No I-told-you-so's, no pep talks, no guilt trips about how I shouldn't let it get to me, nothing. You got it?"

Clark sat down beside her and silently offered the bottle of whiskey he'd bought from the bodega a few blocks away.

She turned to stare at it for a second, then took it out of his hands and cradled it in one arm like a baby. "Fine," she said, cigarette trembling in her mouth. "You can stay. But you still can't talk."

Clark stayed, smoked half her cigarettes so she wouldn't, and thought about how tired he was of Lex Luthor hurting people. It was different when he tried to hurt Clark. 

Lex knew Clark could take it.

"Were you ever in love with him?" she asked, when she was very, very drunk, and Clark was pretending the whiskey had more effect on him than water. "Come on, I know you. I know there was something."

"I don't think we should talk about that," he said dully. "I don't think it will help."

"Yeah," she said, scrubbing at her face with both hands. "It's not gonna help."

*

 _Don't come into work,_ Lois texts him after thirty hours of fighting fires, when he's flying over Boston, around ten in the morning. _I just got a call from my guy @ Lex Labs--they're moving project nic. TODAY._

Clark understands what this means. _Stakeout._ If they can get some pictures of LexCorp scientists with the experimental serum--and then if, say, Superman were to take a sample of that serum to STAR Labs for analysis--they'd have the whole thing buttoned down, right there.

_stakeout. I'm on my way now. plz bring me a breakfast burrito and an americano?_

_Are you texting and driving?_ he sends, because she's going to get herself killed, and it's going to be her own fault.

_r u texting n flying?_

He rolls his eyes, puts the phone away. Speeds back up, and is over Metropolis in ten minutes. He can just make out the blue speck of Lois's car, pulling up to the bland facade of the Luthor Research Institute.

Clark goes home, changes, and is waiting in line at Lois's favorite coffee shop within another five. He's just made it up to the register, breakfast burritos in a bag at his elbow, when he hears it:

An explosion in southern California, at a LutherCorp factory with lead-lined walls. No one else is close. _Superman,_ someone's screaming, _Superman, there's a bomb._

He throws a twenty on the counter, grabs the burritos and runs out the door. He's across town and knocking on the window of Lois's car door as soon as he finds a Dumpster to hide behind while he takes off.

"Sorry about your coffee, and the stakeout," he says in a rush while she rolls the window down. "There's an explosion--maybe more charges--I gotta--" 

"Go," she says, snatching the bag, and he goes.

The factory is in complete chaos: people running out of the building, black smoke and crackling fire. He finds the person who's been calling his name--a woman in a red jumpsuit, trying to get back _in_ to the burning building.

"Superman," she says raggedly when she sees him, "Thank god." 

"What's inside?" he demands.

"More charges," she says. "This wasn't an accident--an ex-employee--" And oh, if Clark never hears another story about a disgruntled ex-employee returning to LexCorp to get revenge, it will be too soon.

"What's _inside_?" he repeats, and she seems to understand him this time.

"Level three," she tells him, choking a little on the smoke. "An ex employee came in--some kind of grudge--"

And that's really all Clark needs to hear, isn't it, because apparently this will be a _completely_ nostalgic emergency. Maybe he really can't escape from Smallville.

It takes him longer than usual to get inside the building--partially because he's being cautious, partially because there are still hundreds of people onsite, and it takes a long time to get them all out of the blast zone.

The second set of charges goes off when he finally makes it into the building, a brief brilliant burst of noise and light.

There isn't anything in Level Three except charred desks and chairs--no nuclear reactor, no unstable, pulsing power source. Nothing of interest at all, except a lead-lined box, left out on an office desk--which Clark opens carefully, bracing himself for a blast of kryptonite radiation.

It doesn't come.

Inside the box is a note, printed on LexCorp company paper.

 _Better luck next time_ , it reads, in Lex's familiar handwriting.

And then the third bomb--hidden in another compartment of the box--detonates, and Clark is rocked back from the explosion, the letter dissolving instantly into ash.

Distraction, he realizes with a cold rush, this whole thing was engineered--just to get Clark away from--from Luthor Institute. From _Lois_. It's too far for him to see all the way to Metropolis, but if he focuses, he can hear--

Gunfire. A masculine shout. Lois's heartbeat, pounding way too fast--her voice rising in panic--"No, _don't-_ -!" Followed by a scream.

Clark's halfway across the world before he consciously decides to abandon the fire, straining against the air like he never has before, panic burning like acid in his throat--

Luthor Research Institute rises up before him, familiar bland buildings, Lois's car, empty, a motorcycle turned on its side at the entrance. He catches a glimpse of her skeleton, surrounded by others, inside.

He goes straight through the ceiling, trying to get to her as fast as he possibly can.

He takes in the scene with automatic, professional detachment: a dark parking garage, a half-loaded truck, at least twenty men who are obviously private security dropped on the floor, at least some of them dead. A case of glass vials, shattered on the concrete, green liquid spilled everywhere.

Someone--he can barely focus on who--is picking Lois up, lifting her out of a crimson puddle. Blood, Clark realizes with a rush of sheer terror, and he's at her side instantly, pulling her into his own arms, almost too afraid to think.

She's breathing, but the back of her head is sticky with blood.

"I think it's just her scalp," Superboy says in a high, panicked voice, and Clark registers that it's him, that Superboy is standing here--in Lex's facility, where he has no right and no reason to be, that he had Lois in his arms. That he has Lois's blood all over his hands, red and bright. "They--that bleeds a lot, right? She didn't--" He reaches out with one of his stained hands, _reaching_ for her, and Clark flinches away, several feet into the air.

Superboy goes very still.

"Don't touch her," Clark gets out, and his voice doesn't sound right, even to himself.

Superboy doesn't move.

He lets the adrenaline push him up out of the ceiling, into the sky.

*

Mild concussion. It turns out to be a scalp wound. "They bleed a lot, but it's not that serious," the nurse at Metropolis General tells him cautiously, her eyes on his hands, which he realizes abruptly are still bloody. "She'll just need a few stitches." She gives him a careful look, and then suggests that maybe he should go wash up.

Clark goes to the hospital bathroom, splashes water on his face. He doesn't realize until he catches sight of himself in the mirror that he's still dressed as Superman, that there's a scorch mark on his cheek from the fire, that flakes of Lois's blood are still clinging to the arms of his suit. He looks like a murderer, he thinks distantly.

She's going to be fine, the doctor assures him several times, overawed by the costume. They'll want to keep her overnight, but that's just for observation. She should be able to go home in the morning, he says hastily, and Clark asks if she's awake, and before his heart has a chance to stop racing he's walking into Lois's hospital room. She's awake, although she looks like shit: white bandage over the back of her skull, purple bruises under her eyes, sipping balefully at a bottle of orange juice. She hates orange juice--it'll be for the blood loss.

"Where's Conner?" is the first thing she asks him, looking over his shoulder.

Clark just shakes his head, and he watches as it dawns on her, exactly what he did.

"You _left him there_?" She's sitting up straight in the hospital bed, voice raising, and that can't be good for her, can't be--

"I had to get you to the hospital," he says flatly, and she's actually flushing with fury.

"You left a _teenager_ alone in an unsafe facility, surrounded by _dead bodies_?" she shouts, her fingers tightening noticeably on the orange juice bottle.

"No, Superman left Superboy standing in a pool of _your blood,_ " Clark says, starting to feel angry himself, because if there's one thing she can never expect him to do, it's to be calm

"Because he _saved my life_?" Lois asks sarcastically. "Are you going to punish him for that, too?" 

Clark flinches back. "That's not fair."

"No," she says, fixing him with a brutal stare, twin red spots flaring on her cheeks. "You know what else isn't fair? You're the closest thing that kid has to a father, and you're treating him like a _criminal_ because of how he was born, and this isn't just about you, Clark, this is going to _fuck him up_ for the rest of his _life_ \--" Her voice is shaking, and so are her hands, orange juice spilling onto the hospital sheets, and he can't listen to this, he _can't,_ he--

"I thought he killed you," he shouts, slamming a hand into the wall. "Is that what you want to hear? I saw him holding your body, and I thought he killed you, and you can pretend you don't understand all you want, but I was justified in thinking that. He _could have killed you_." And how did he get in the facility, how did he know where Lois was, how--

"Oh my _god_ ," Lois says with a sneer. "This is not about my safety, you jerk. This is about your _son_."

"He's not my son," Clark bursts out, because she's not giving him any ground, and he doesn't know how to explain that it's not possible. "He's Lex's son, and Lex can control him, Lois, we know that for a _fact_."

"He won't," Lois says, and Clark actually laughs, because she can't actually believe that. "Jesus, will you just trust me for once--I took care of it," she snaps.

"You're an idiot if you think Lex Luthor would give up a tool that powerful," Clark says bitterly.

"He's not a tool," she says from between clenched teeth. "He's a kid, and if you would stop hiding behind your Lex issues, maybe you could take a step towards seeing that--"

"Lex _designed him in a lab_ ," he snarls, his heart hurting too much to keep it locked behind his teeth. "He's not a person, he's a _biological weapon_."

Lois goes very still, and she's never looked at him like that before, not even before she knew he was Superman and thought all he was good for was being late to meetings and bringing her lukewarm coffee. Like he's beneath contempt. He realizes with a sudden lurch that this is the look she reserves for Lex Luthor at his worst. 

"Lois," he tries, heart beating in his throat, stepping forward.

"Maybe you'd better go find an emergency somewhere," she says coldly.

*

He stumbles out, and as he goes he hears Lois throw her orange juice at the wall.

Once he reaches the street, he launches himself back into the air. He can't be around people right now, he can't be--it makes him sick, the thought that after all these years Lex has finally managed to poison the one thing in Clark's life that made him happy. He can't, he can't _do_ this, not on these terms, he can't keep breaking his own heart like this, it's not _fair_.

Before he really realizes he's going to, he finds himself across the city, thirty floors up, staring through the wall of glass that separates Lex's penthouse from the sky.

Lex is inside, sitting on a couch with a laptop. Some instinct makes him look up, and he looks straight at Clark, all pale skin and startled blue eyes.

Clark breaks the window.

A second later he has Lex by the shoulders, pushed against the nearest wall. "Why did you do it," he shouts, wishing down to his bones that Lex was the kind of villain he could fight, because then maybe he could win.

"Why did I do what," Lex says in a calm voice, only the rapid pulse of his heart against Clark's fingers betraying the truth.

"Don't play games with me," Clark says, hands tightening on Lex's shoulders. "Lois is in the _hospital_."

Behind him, the door bursts open, and Lex's private security rushes in. At least some of them are packing kryptonite bullets. Clark can't bring himself to care.

"Stand down," Lex says sharply over his shoulder. "It's all right. Give us a minute."

"Explain it to me," Clark says, realizing distantly that he must leaving finger-shaped bruises on Lex's skin, "Tell me exactly what was more important than her life." He thought Lex understood. There are lines neither of them would survive being pushed over.

Lex shifts in Clark's grip with a wince, his hands coming up to cup Clark's elbows, as though he had enough strength to push Clark away. "It wasn't in the plan," he says. "You were supposed to be distracted, she was never supposed to get inside the building."

It's hard for Clark to focus on what he's saying, because he's distracted by the look on Lex's face, closer than Clark usually gets to see it--scarred mouth twisted with what looks like remorse, his eyes wide and blue and hungry, a liar's eyes, always offering Clark what he wants and taking it away.

Lex is still talking, his hands sliding up from Clark's elbows to his biceps, almost an embrace. "They were under instructions to break her camera if she did make it inside, not to harm her--" they'd known Lois would try to sneak inside and find a way to trace the shipment, they'd assumed she wouldn't be able to do anything, they'd--

"You underestimated her," Clark tries, even though it doesn't sound right, it's hard for him to think with this ache inside his chest, this ugly thing that wants to hollow him out and crawl out of his mouth, venomous and righteous. "You called in Superboy as--damage control? You've been--" controlling him, Lex, admit it, you made him in your image, you're going to use their son to hurt him.

"No," Lex says, shaking his head. "No, Clark, she called him. I underestimated _Conner_ ," he stresses, and there's a note in his voice that Clark can't identify but it makes him feel shaky and horrible, like Lex is touching something he has no right to touch. "I didn't realize she'd call for him. I didn't realize he'd come, that he'd take your fiancée at her word. But she called him, and he came, and a case of the Nicodemus serum broke in the struggle, infecting several of the scientists charged with moving the shipment. Do you remember how powerful the flower could make a human? How violent? The serum is fifty times as strong. And Conner incapacitated them all. Not to mention saving Lois from an undoubtedly terrible death." He's smiling now, one thumb stroking against the soft skin of Clark’s inner arm, and Clark realizes that he sounds _proud_.

In an instant his hand is off Lex's shoulder and around his throat, slamming his pale head back against the wall, Lex gasping and straining for breath under his fingers. "When," he snarls, and he can barely recognize the sound of his own voice, the words so hot and painful in his throat, "When are you going to do it?" When is Lex going to take back his gift, how long does Clark have to wait before his fears are justified, how long does he have to try and bear this hope?

"When--am--I going to do what?" Lex wheezes, and he's still smiling, unbelievable but true, _smiling_ , and Clark can't believe that Lex doesn't know exactly what he's doing to Clark, doesn't know exactly why Clark is so afraid, because Lex has always known how to get to Clark, just like he knows that Clark is close enough to kill him, is close enough--

Lex struggles for air, and Clark squeezes his eyes shut, focuses on uncurling his fingers, one by one. He wouldn't. But Lex knows that, too, sucking in deep breaths and coughing them away, Clark's hand still resting against his throat, red wrecked smile still on his face.

"Please," Clark whispers, and Lex leans into Clark's hand, a gentle pressure. His eyes are half-lidded, pupils black and huge, and Clark shudders.

"If I told you he was just a boy with terrible parents," Lex rasps, breath warm and uneven against Clark's skin, "Would that make it better or worse?"

And Clark takes that like a blow to the chest, rocking backwards, his hands falling away from Lex's body.

Lex peels himself off the wall, movements shaky but his eyes hard and bright. "Which father do you think he'll blame for it, if he turns out like me?" he asks with another twisted smile, stepping forward. Clark can't move, horror freezing him in place.

Lex claps a hand down on Clark's shoulder, familiar Smallville gesture, squeezing roughly. Clark can already see the bruises staining his white throat. "Maybe this is the new war," Lex says in a confidential tone that's ruined by his voice, scraped raw. "Maybe it's you and me for our son's soul."

"Stop," Clark tries to say, but he doesn't think any sound comes out of his mouth, throat working uselessly.

"Or maybe we've already lost, and he'll decide to kill us both," Lex continues, just as close as before, but on his terms, bruised and damaged and warm hands on Clark's shoulders, and the vicious ache in Clark's chest is just another reason to hate him, because he does this--he makes everything confused and horrible, he makes everything a betrayal, and Clark wants to make it _stop_. "Patricide is a Luthor family tradition, after all--and your track record doesn't look so great either, _Kal_. Can you think of a better way for the story to end? The last son of Krypton and the last--"

Clark kisses him, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

It's stupid--instinctive--Clark's body turning on him like everything else--but Lex's fingers convulse on Clark's shoulders. He makes a tiny, terrible sound into Clark's mouth, and the sound shakes something loose in Clark's chest. Everything's falling apart, he thinks numbly, but his hands are coming up to cradle Lex's fragile skull, and Lex is kissing him back like he's been waiting for this since Clark was fifteen. Maybe he has.

"I can't," Clark says against Lex's mouth while Lex gasps for air, "I can't, I don't. I won't do this."

"You won't," Lex agrees raggedly, but he kisses Clark again and Clark lets him.  
  
The problem is that Clark always wants to know the truth, even when the truth is horrible, is all this hidden longing only Lex knows how to pull out of him. 

The next time they break apart, Clark pushes Lex physically away, and Lex just looks at him, red mouth and red-rimmed eyes and red welts raised on his neck. He looks _ruined_.

"Go," Lex snarls, like he can tell what Clark's thinking.

Clark goes.

*

He goes to the Arctic, to the ice and quiet that his parents left for him. He doesn't call Lois. He realizes vaguely that he doesn't know what happened to his phone.

He lies down in the snow and stares up at the sky, blue and limitless. He shuts his eyes. Goes inside the Fortress when it gets dark.

"Computer," he says, because he'd had to give the AI a template that wasn't Jor-El or Lara, so he'd made it watch a bunch of Star Trek episodes. "Email Perry White. Tell him I'm following a lead, and I won't be in tomorrow."

The AI informs him that the Justice League, Batman, Black Canary, Lois Lane, and his mother have all been trying to reach him.

"Computer," he says distantly, "inform the Justice League that unless it's an emergency, it can officially wait. Ignore Bruce and Dinah." Undoubtedly they want to talk to him about his son. "Tell my mom I'll call her back in a few days."

And Lois Lane? the AI asks.

Clark closes his eyes. "Send her an email. Tell her I need a day."

The AI does as it's told.

*

Clark dreams, and the dream is a memory.

He's sixteen again, and Lex is driving him home, in a silver Porsche.

Clark _feels_ sixteen, awkward and full of longing.

Lex smiles very faintly to himself, and the night is warm and dark around him, blue shadows pooling under his eyes, his mouth, the hollow of his throat. 

"You know," Clark says, eyes on Lex's throat, "as long as I live, I don't think I'll ever understand your family."

"Neither will I," Lex tells him, laughing quietly. "Just remember--my family may try to rule the world, but yours will inherit the earth."

Then the dream changes, and Clark is looking at Lex in Belle Reve, nakedly vulnerable, his eyes red-rimmed and shadowed. The first time Lex ever asked him for help, the first time Clark decided not to save him.

"I wish you wouldn't lie to me," Lex whispers.

That's when Clark wakes up.

*

Clark hates lies. He spent his entire childhood lying, and when he finally grew up, he decided he was done with them.

He told the world the truth: his parents named him Kal-El, and he is the last son of Krypton. He wants to help. Then he put his glasses on and told the world a different truth: his name is Clark Kent, he's from Kansas, and he wants to put the truth in print. The AI tells him that Kryptonians are low-level telepaths, that everyone sees a slightly different face when they see Superman, that Clark does it subconsciously and instinctively, probably due to a childhood spent being afraid of someone discovering his secret.

When he was younger, he thought that living his life honestly would make everything easier, brighter, better. He wishes it were that simple.

Here's the truth: Clark has been grossly, brutally unfair to Conner Kent.

He doesn't know how to fix that.

He doesn't know if he _wants_ to fix that.

The truth is, lying would be easier.

*

Eventually, he goes home.

Lois is sitting at the kitchen table, the way she always does when she's bracing herself for a fight.

"There are some things I need to tell you," Clark begins, breathing deeply. He tells her everything, as honestly as he can. How he broke his promise and spied on her. How he kissed their worst enemy. How he doesn't love the child that they say is his son. That he's not sure he knows how. How he hurt Lex, and how it terrified him. After all this time, it's still difficult for him to wrench his secrets out into the open. It's painful.

She's quiet when he finishes. "Are you in love with Lex?" she asks him finally.

"No," Clark answers, trying to keep his breathing steady. "At least, I don't. I don't think so."

"You don't think so?" she repeats, unreadable, and he winces, scrubbing at his mouth with one hand. 

"Lex is--important," Clark tries, frustration building up in his throat because he doesn't have the right words, and it's _critical_ that he explains this exactly right. "And I think--he might always be important. But I don't--he scares me," he finishes, desperate for her to understand what he means.

"What he is to you?" She's using her reporter voice, clinical, detached. "That scares you?"

"What he might do," Clark says. "To me. For me. That terrifies me."

She nods, like this makes sense. "Okay. Okay. My turn to say some things, and you don't--you don't get to say a word unless I ask you to," she says, and her voice trembles a very little bit, for the first time. "Yes?"

"Yes," Clark promises, swallowing.

"You never do this again," she says in a voice like steel. "You don't start letting this shit build up. You come and talk to me about it, like an adult. Okay?"

"Yes," he whispers.

"Second. You never call Conner Kent a thing ever again. To me. To him. To anyone. He's a person, and you will treat him like one," she says, passion making her louder, "and you will deal with the fact that he's your family, even if you don't love him, and that I'm not going to be another person who abandons him. _Deal_. Again, like a grownup. You don't take your feelings out on a teenager, because you're _better_ than that." She looks at him sharply, like she's expecting him to argue. "Okay?"

He nods, throat clenched too tight to speak.

"Third. I am. I am going to draw up a contract, and all of this will be on it, and you will follow that contract if I have to make you sign in blood." She stands up abruptly, pushing back her chair and walking around the table, leaning against the edge, right beside him. He stays where he is.

"Four," she says, looking directly at him. "You never kiss anyone again unless I tell you it's okay." She pauses, an impatient look on her face, and her voice cracks when she adds " _Okay_?"

"Okay," he manages.

She draws in a very deep breath. "Okay. Okay. Five. Do you love me?"

"What?" he says stupidly, because if he didn't love her, why would he--how could he do this if he didn't love her?

"It's not a hard question," she says, a miserable expression flickering briefly across her face before she shoves it back down.

" _Yes_ ," Clark says, and he has to stand up, because his voice is shaking, and maybe his hands are shaking too. "I do, _god_ , I love you."

Her mouth wobbles, and her eyes fill up, and for a second he thinks she's about to start crying--but then she's stomping out of the kitchen, into the bedroom, and he hears the sound of a drawer being yanked open so hard that it hits the floor, but she ignores it, coming back into the kitchen with a blue velvet box in her hands. "Well I love you," she says, and it comes out high-pitched and furious, and Clark's heart is beating too fast and she's biting her lower lip in the way that means she's trying to calm herself down but can't. "I love you even though you're a stupid, horrible, emotionally f-fucked up alien, and I want to know _right now_ if you'll marry me," she finishes angrily, and she's opening the box and shoving it in his face like he doesn't know exactly what's inside it. "Okay?"

Clark's eyes are stinging, there's something sharp lodged in his throat, and his hands are definitely shaking, and he loves her so much he _hurts,_ but this is the worst time and they're both distraught and it's probably a very bad idea _and there's no way he's saying no to this question_. "Okay," he gasps, and she is crying now, fumbling the diamond ring he made for her out of the box, letting the box drop to the floor.

"Okay," she says, her shoulders shaking a little, and she jams the stupid tiny ring onto his finger. It barely goes down to the first knuckle, but that doesn't matter because she's kissing him and he's kissing her and she lets a little sob loose into his mouth and he doesn't know how this is simultaneously the worst and the best day of his life, but it is.

*

Lex sends white roses to the office.

Lois sets them on fire. 

In the office trash can. The overhead sprinklers go off. The fire department gets called.

"I love you," he says, after kissing her soundly in the artificial rain, the newsroom a soaking, furious mess around them.

"Damn straight," she says, touching the ring he's wearing on a chain around his neck.

*

A month later, Clark visits Happy Harbor. He stays about three thousand feet above Mount Justice. It's just barely dawn, and he doesn't really expect to see anyone. Don't teenagers sleep all the time? Isn't that what everyone says?

Superboy's awake.

He's not up, though--just lying in bed, an iPod resting on his chest, staring up at the ceiling. His wolf resting at the foot of the bed, twitching with an animal's dreams, snapping at nothing. He doesn't look like a child. He looks too old--too sharp, too strong, a constant coiled threat. His eyes are half-lidded, but Clark can see them clearly--that pale blue that Clark doesn't know how to associate with anything but danger.

Clark shuts his eyes, draws in a deep breath. This isn't helping.

That's when he hears it. Low, rough voice, singing quietly to himself, just barely in time with the music Clark can hear streaming from the iPod.

_You want me to lie, not break your heart  
I want you to fly, not stop and start_

Clark keeps his eyes closed. Just listens.

"We want this like everything else," Conner Kent sings to himself, wavering and off-key, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his stomach. "Maybe we didn't understa-a-and. It's just the end of the, end of the world."

Conner plays the rest of the album before he flicks the iPod off and gets up.

 Clark stays and listens to every song, eyes shut the whole time.

   
(end)

**Author's Note:**

> I love feedback of all kinds, I love talking about Lois Lane, and I'm wildehack over on tumblr if you want to come and say hi. The next story in the series is in progress, and should hopefully be posted soon (but I'm kind of hopelessly optimistic about this sort of thing.)


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